The Hard Way — Lee Child

To be clear: I am predisposed to like any novel in this series about Jack Reacher. Reacher is the ultimate strong silent hero, an ex army MP who roams the country never carrying anything with him but a toothbrush. He works when the mood strikes him — one novel begins with him digging pools in southern Florida simply for the physical workout — but in the more recent novels he rarely stays anywhere more than two or three days.

Generally Reacher tries to stay off the grid. He doesn’t have a driver’s license, he accepts no federal money, he always pays with cash. But he’s also got a strong sense of right and wrong, and he doesn’t walk away from a fight.

This is the tenth Jack Reacher novel. I haven’t disliked any of them, though some I wouldn’t necessarily re-read. My favorite is still Die Trying, and I liked Without Fail and Tripwire almost as much.

So this new novel, Reacher is spending a couple days in Manhattan. He’s sitting in an outdoor cafe and he sees a man walk up to a car, get in it, and drive away. That simple beginning launches him into a kidnapping investigation, one with many twists and turns. He teams up with a former FBI agent, a woman he’s very attracted to.

Reacher likes women. They like him back.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I didn’t like this novel as much as the last one. A couple things come to mind: for the first time, I noticed a wrinkle in a clue before Reacher did. That bothered me. And more important, I kept waiting for him to remember where he was. In Tripwire, he comes close to settling down. A young woman he knew as the daughter of his superior officer comes back into his life. She’s thirty, divorced, a lawyer. They never acted on the mutual attraction when he was in the service, but now things heat up, and Reacher comes as close as he ever will to living a somewhat normal life. All that happens in Manhattan, and it ends in Manhattan too, and not easily.

At no time in this novel does Reacher ever think about Jodie. He never takes note of places he had been with her, where he lived with her, where she worked. He never wonders about her, if she’s come back to Manhattan. I kept wondering, but to him it was as if she never existed. Somehow that just doesn’t sit right. I wonder if Lee Child did this on purpose, and why.

It didn’t ruin the novel for me, but this oversight was in the forefront while I read. Which really, was a shame because otherwise it’s a good story, well put together and full of classic Reacherisms.

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2 Replies to “The Hard Way — Lee Child”

Having only read one Lee Child Novel (Last Shot), I found it to be pretty frustrating- I know this guy is ex-military and all, but where does he get all his money that he is presumably not carrying on his person AND how does he access said money if he stays off the grid? Without any explanation of how all this was happening, his ability to travel and buy clothes out of thin air really bugged me. Oh man, I am being really nit-picky here.

On a different note, there is an article on Slate today, “Purloined Poe”, that talks about how historical fiction is all the rage right now, I thought you might be interested in.

Sara, When I first noticed that The Hard Way was set in Manhattan I was surprised as well. First, that Child used Manhattan again and second, no mention of Jodie. I think Child must have deliberately left out all mention of Jodie and Reacher’s previous time in New York. To show that Reacher does travel light, not just physically; he doesn’t dwell on the past. While I did enjoy The Hard Way – I love any and all Reacher books – I did find this one a little less satisfying than some of Child’s previous efforts.

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My name is Rosina Lippi. I'm a former academic and tenured university professor, writing full time since 2000. Under the pen name Sara Donati I am the author of the Wilderness series, six historical novels that follow the fortunes of a group of families living in upstate New York from about 1792-1825. A new series based on later generations of the same families was launched September 1, 2015 with The Gilded Hour. I'm working on the next volume in the new series, called Where the Light Enters.